Happy Holidays, all you Sprocket Podcast devotees! Or, as these socks suggest, happy Challah Days if that is appropriate to your observance.

Brock went to Boston as is his custom for the Christmas season, and while there he spoke with Michael & Bianca of the Lowell Kinetic Sculpture Race, an amazing feat of engineering and teamwork that sees groups compete with homemade human-powered machines through obstacles such as a river and a mud pit. Listen to our interview conducted in the back office of a seasonal skating rink!

The Lowell Kinetic Sculpture Race happens every third Saturday in September EVERY YEAR, so get your team together and your machine engineered!

Kevin Prentice has joined us before – he’s one of the geniuses at Ride With GPS, an indispensable tool for planning and having active adventures. He brings his friend Donnie Kolb from oregonbikepacking.com onto the show to talk about adventures in dirt and how to get into some fun trouble in the woods or the desert. Some of you might remember Donnie from the Oregon Outback route or his former project VeloDirt; we’re excited to finally get to meet him.

Our friend and work travel correspondent Eric Iverson dropped in on the Salt Lake City version of the Thursday Night Ride phenomenon, known locally as The 9.9.9, and caught some great conversation with various participants! He also recaps a visit to the great state of Alaska where he met listener Phil, who notoriously wears a live bear on his back to keep warm. We’re grateful to have a friend who can let us listen in to so many adventures!

Send your audio to thesprocketpodcast@gmail.com and we will more than likely share it with the world.

Wayne Norman is a long-time donor to our show with a road trip happening now and an incredible story of recovering from a health scare to keep on moving from Adventure To Adventure!Maria Schur is a friend who has been on our show several other times. We invited her in to describe her involvement in the Swift Summit 200/100 and how she wants to approach the event.Annalisa took a cross country bicycle tour while taking photographs & managing type 1 diabetes, and ended up staying with Guthrie who happens to be her warmshowers.org host. Check out her portrait series at 4000milesofportraits.com!

We Got To Hang Out is a fairly new cycling-centric podcast that is already exploding in popularity! We met them while chatting on an episode of the KBOO Bike Show a few months back about podcasting about bicycling. Annalisa Fish & Abby Watson are enthusiastic about outdoor recreation and have had the chance to interview many notable people in the field, including Katie “Fn” Compton and John Watson of The Radavist. We Got To Hang Out is a proud member of the Wide Angle Podium network, host to many other fine shows about active outdoor recreation. You’ll want to hear their show!

Also: Brock rode a lot of miles in a chamois, and Aaron rented a car for his upcoming move.

Brock & Aaron participated in The Ladd’s 500, arguably the stupidest bike event of the spring season. And that’s why it’s so great! Five hundred laps around a ⅕ mile circle, mostly by relay teams but also by a few individuals. What happened? All the stories, here.

Justin Patti is an acquaintance from Colorado who recently moved to Portland! He’s a friend of former show guest The Professor, a bicycle enthusiast who once helped staff KRFC’s Bikes and Beer radio show, and he recently took a low-structure trip to have bicycling adventures in southern California.

Harry Dalgaard & Gabriel Amadeus present the first public announcement, explanation, and question/answer session of the Oregon Timber Trail, a new public route allowing people to cross the state of Oregon from south to north (or vice versa, weather conditions depending) by mountain bike or a number of other methods. We were there and caught it on tape! Thanks to Base Camp Brewing for hosting the event, filling its walls with perhaps more beards and cycling caps than ever!

Our friend Ross Putnam from Base Camp Brewing helped to put a street party together in front of his brewery. Collabofest 2017 featured 16 local breweries working together to experiment and innovate; we went to taste some collaboratively created beers, meet some people, and enjoy the crisp winter day with friends!